Challenge

With more than 10M active monthly subscribers playing worldwide, World of Warcraft (WoW) is one of the most recognized and popular gaming franchises. In addition to winning countless awards for rich MMORPG gameplay and cutting-edge digital design, WoW has also developed into a vibrant online interactive community. Blizzard had the foresight to build into their platform rich chat functionality, party and guild systems for in-game collaboration, and even a vibrant digital goods ecosystem.

To extend World of Warcraft’s footprint, Blizzard looked to Twitter for ways to broadcast a user’s gameplay and in-game activity to a broader community. As WoW Community Team Editor Micah Whipple (@Bashiok) notes, “Twitter was a natural fit for integration, given that we were already using the platform to broadcast product updates and provide support to our active online community.”

Solution

Blizzard’s key objective was to help their users bring their in-game experience to their external friends, communities and guilds. To accomplish this, they created a Twitter sharing feature that lets users take screenshots or selfies and share them directly via a Tweet. Additionally, users are prompted to share their accomplishments or acquisition of new items on Twitter.

The integration incorporates the following pieces of the Twitter platform:

Twitter OAuth to connect the user’s WoW profile to their Twitter account

Screenshot and selfie functionality to capture great in-game experiences

Custom Tweet intent to clearly indicate posting content to Twitter

Twitter REST APIs to upload a Tweet with a photo

Additionally, WoW’s Community Team ensured that their users were educated on the new feature through a FAQ covering functionality, security and WoW’s no-spam policy on the user’s behalf.

“

The Twitter APIs were pretty quick to learn and get implemented. We were able to easily roll out this new feature to our global community across 11 di erent languages worldwide.

”

Micah Whipple

Editor, World of Warcraft Community Development, Blizzard Entertainment

Results

The integration with Twitter has served as a natural extension of the in-game community that WoW has worked so hard to establish. Accomplishments, in-game experiences and selfies are shared to friends and communities with a few clicks. As Whipple notes, “We see new Tweets and photos posted every few minutes, and it brings these great World of Warcraft experiences to both people’s friends who might also be playing, to the gamers who used to play, or those that might want to try WoW for the very first time.”

Whipple also notes the ease of implementation in building on the Twitter platform. “The Twitter APIs were pretty quick to learn and get implemented. We were able to easily roll out this new feature to our global community across 11 dierent languages worldwide.”

“

Twitter was a natural fit for integration, given that we were already using the platform to broadcast product updates and provide support to our active online community.

”

Micah Whipple

Editor, World of Warcraft Community Development, Blizzard Entertainment